In the meantime most of my spare time has been filled taking a photography class about how to shoot in Manual mode on a DSLR camera from Maggie Holmes. She is a WONDERFUL teacher and I highly recommend her classes. I start the Advanced Class tomorrow and I am really excited. My pictures look SO much better now than they ever did when I was shooting pictures in Auto mode although it is a bit harder. It is becoming more and more 2nd nature though and Maggie says that after awhile you really don't even have to think about it, your fingers just start moving. I can't wait until I get to that level!! My hope is to one day start a photography business, just part-time. In the meantime, my motivation was just to learn how to take better pictures of my projects so that they look better online and so that I can start sending pictures to publishers of my projects that look good enough that I am not ashamed of my own picture taking! I have yet to send anything in to a publisher but it is another thing on my bucket list. You can find Maggie's Photography schedule of classes HERE.
Above is a picture of my yorkies Gabby on the left, and Bayleigh on the right. I took this picture on a VERY cloudy day outside on my ancient Nikon D50 on manual mode. Maggie really liked it and so do I. They are not very cooperative photography subjects because they hate flash and they think now that every time someone points a camera at them that a flash is going to go off in their eyes. I have learned how NOT to use a flash and they are getting a little bit better about not running/walking off or dropping their heads down. It's still hard to get a good picture of both of them together at the same time.
I took the above pictures at our local Catholic Cemetery. I don't have many places to go around here to take pictures that are close to my house and I had to have pictures for an assignment the other day so I walked over there with the hubs. (He is a HORRIBLE photography subject, just sits or stands there like a slug) *lol* I must say it is a pretty cemetery. I have always liked old cemeteries, but this one was not that old. There were a LOT of people that had been born in the 1800's but nothing before that. This cemetery has a LOT of graves that are above ground. Some of the buildings people have must cost in the 10's of thousands of dollars, and hold probably between 4-20 people. I just can't see spending that much money on something my body is going to sit in. I'm sorry, I am a morbid person. I guess it comes from working in a hospital as a respiratory therapist for 12 years. :)
This is a picture that I took of my husband while he was tossing his stick around. It was part of an assignment in my photography class where we were to show a picture that shows movement and one that shows movement frozen. This is the picture that actually shows movement. The stick is blurry and looks like it is moving in the picture and my husbands hand look as if they are moving a little too. If I had been a little smarter I would have positioned my subject a little more to my right and I would have moved a little to my left, to get the glare of the sun out of the picture. Ah, we learn from our mistakes, don't we?
In the below picture it shows frozen movement. The sticks are all frozen as if suspended in air. My husband is also frozen. He also looks funny. =)
I hope you have enjoyed my photos today. I hope to improve my skills during the next 6 weeks in Maggie's Advanced Class and I am really excited to see the pictures that all of the other girls in the class take as well. The message board is really helpful in addition to the lessons and the assignments, with feedback from Maggie on our pictures. She is really a talented photographer and has produced some really beautiful children too. You can see them on her website at the link I gave above about her classes.
Have a great week everyone!! I hope to start posting more often and get some pictures taken of the projects I have done lately. I'm really excited to see that my small number of followers is growing and I hope to see it grow even more in the future. I will be having another giveaway when I reach 100 followers on my blog so tell all of your friends to check it out! If you haven't checked out my Youtube Channel LaceAndMetal, give it a try. I will be making a lot more videos in the future and will have more tutorials soon, I hope.
Love and Hugs,
Kellye
The Distressed Hippye
